This phenomenon did not surprise Harvard University professor and virtuoso theoretical physicist Avi Loeb, Ph.D., who is convinced AI will soon surpass anything the human brain’s flesh-and-blood machinery is capable of.

“We’re just in the infancy of this era,” Loeb says. “It will be essential for us as a species to maintain superiority, but it will illustrate to us that we are not the pinnacle of creation.”

In a blog post, Loeb ponders how advanced the artificial intelligence of hypothetical alien civilizations could have possibly grown—especially civilizations that might have already been around for billions of years before anything vaguely humanoid appeared in the cosmos. What would the AI’s capabilities look like? What would be its limits? Are there even any limits left?